The next book from Good And Geeky is about dictation. It’s in the Amazon Bookstore now. Good and Geeky Dictation Expert Mac and iOS. Here is a video which is going to be featured in the book. There will be other videos in there showing you how to dictate and transcribe using DragonDictate. The reason wfor a book about dictation is that some people find it difficult to get into the process of speaking there writing instead of typing with the keyboard. I’ve been using DragonDictate for three or four years now and it’s the most productive and easy way to do any writing. I worked out it is three or four times faster than typing on a keyboard. For any serious writer needing to crank out the words for a blog site, educational writing or making short stories or novels the best way to do it is to dictate.
When you are dictating you can easily write more than a thousand words in less than an hour. Depending upon the sort of writing you’re doing it may even be possible to write a thousand words in a half an hour. Some writing requires more thinking time as your writing than others. If you combine using dictation with quality planning and outlining of your writing then you’ll find dictation invaluable. (Of course this is being dictated and I’m not using a keyboard.)
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Why is it so hard to Dictate instead of Type?
I had to do some serious thinking as to why people would think dictation hard. It is necessary for you to add punctuation as you speak otherwise you just get one big lump of unintelligible text which is difficult to edit. Once you get used to adding punctuation as you speak it becomes as easy as if you were typing. When you type you add punctuation as you type so why can’t you do it when you’re speaking?
Some people find it difficult to keep their hands away from the keyboard as they work. In most applications it is a good idea not to mix dictation with typing. DragonDictate keeps a track of which words you used with your dictation. If you go in there willy-nilly adding words by typing then it is possible for the application to become confused. It might not know where to put the cursor when you want to use your voice to do editing.
It’s easy to tell Dragon dictate to select a particular word and change it for something else. You can tell DragonDictate to select a whole load of words and change the lot for something which makes more sense to what you’re trying to say. It’s even possible to do a thing where you are changing some text to bold or italics. When you’re writing a first draft the best thing to do is to just let it all flow as you’re going to have to do editing at a later stage anyway. It’s not necessary to do more editing and spend more time correcting what you’ve written than if you were typing.
The dictation software knows how to spell much better than most people. Providing you speak in full sentences you’re not going to be troubled with the problem of using homonyms. Some people don’t know the difference between using their, there or they’re and that can be less likely to happen if you’re dictating your words instead.
My recommendation with dictation is to spend a couple of weeks to a month using dictation extensively. Most people within this time will develop a skill of dictation and will not want to go back to pounding on the keyboard. Another benefit of dictation over typing is you are less likely to suffer repetitive stress injuries such as carpal tunnel syndrome. Your wrists will thank you for not spending so much time with the keyboard.
Published and Available on Amazon
Please leave a review for the book if you get some benefit from reading it. It is all about encouragement to use dictation for your writing and also to use your voice to control your computer.
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